THE SECRET OF THE
SAHARA: KUFARA
ROSITA FORBES
[Illustration: ROSITA FORBES]
THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA: KUFARA
BY
ROSITA FORBES
Author of “Unconducted Wanderers,” etc.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
SIR HARRY JOHNSTON
WITH 54 ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR
[Illustration: GHD Trademark.]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
AHMED MOHAMMED BEY HASSANEIN
IN MEMORY OF HOURS GRAVE AND GAY, BATTLES DESPERATE OR HUMOROUS, OF
SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN THE LIBYAN DESERTS.
INTRODUCTION
BY SIR HARRY JOHNSTON
THE OASES OF KUFARA
Very nearly midway between the great mountains of Tibesti (which rise to
over eleven thousand feet in height); the plateaus of Fazan; the
mountainous ‘island’ of the Cyrenaica; the oases of Western Egypt, and
of Dongola; lies the still mysterious region of Kufara, visited and
described by Mrs. Rosita Forbes, the author of this book.
She has been seemingly the second explorer of European birth to
accomplish this feat; for although the Kufara district was first placed
on the map with no great incorrectness of location by Friedrich Gerhard
Rohlfs, after his journey thither in 1878–9, he was—as Mrs. Forbes
shows—the only European of his party to reach these oases, and his stay
there was very short.
Apparently he only revealed, only realised by sight or information the
salt lakes at Buseima and a rather problematical ‘Erbelma’ (_qy._
Erbayana, Erbelna?) to the south-west; and either he did not see, or he
did not record the more important sheets of salt or brackish water in
the comparatively large Kebabo oasis or collection of oases.
These lakes of Kebabo stand at an average elevation of about fourteen
hundred feet above sea level, an elevation which was divined or
calculated hurriedly by F. G. Rohlfs, but more accurately determined by
Mrs. Forbes and her Egyptian fellow-traveller, Hassanein Bey. By these
later figures the altitude above sea level of the Kebabo Oases may prove
to be slightly lower than in the estimation of the older maps (1614
feet). Still it cannot be much less on the lake levels than fourteen
hundred feet; therefore in considering the problems it is not possible
to attribute the Kebabo oases, the villages of Kufara to anything more
than the site of a largish lake in prehistoric times which sent its
waters flowing west into the great Wadi al Fardi, the course of which
seems to have passed through Taiserbo to Jaghabub and thence past the
oasis of Siwa into the Nile near Cairo.
The Libyan Desert through which Mrs. Forbes travelled, starting from
Cyrenaica and returning to Egypt, is classed by her and by most other
persons with the Sahara; which properly speaking lies to the west of a
long chain of peaks, ridges, and tablelands grouped in its central
section under the name of ‘Tibesti’, the mountainous country of the Tu,
Teda, or Tibu (Tebu or Tubu) peoples. But it would almost seem for
reason of its past mammalian fauna as though we must distinguish between
the Sahara and the Libyan Deserts, just as for similar reasons we do not
extend the name of ‘Sahara’ to cover the sandy and stony wastes of
Arabia. The true Libyan Desert—almost a more awful region of desolation
than the Sahara west of the Tibesti mountains—would seem in ancient
human times, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand
years ago, to have been the western area of the Nile basin. Its mighty
rivers, their courses still traceable, fed by the almost Alpine range of
Tibesti, by the vanished rain from the plateaus and ridges of Wanyanga
and Darfur, flowed towards the Nile between its nascent delta and
Kordofan. Its mammalian fauna and to a lesser degree its flora differed
in some important particulars from that of the Sahara (then possibly
much covered by shallow lakes and inland seas); and still more from the
beasts and trees of true West Africa or Central Africa. The White
Rhinoceros or a nearly allied form of it has left fossil remains in
Algeria and is still found within the equatorial Nile basin. It has
penetrated south along the eastern side of Central Africa, but it does
not appear to have passed into the Congo basin or to have reached the
regions south of Algeria or west of Tibesti and Darfur. The ‘Black’
Rhinoceros with the pointed lip has pushed westward to the lands round
Lake Chad and into the basin of the Shari, but seems never to have
travelled as far westward as the Niger or ever to have been found in
true West Africa. No zebra or wild ass, so far as we know, ever left
Algeria or the Nile basin to enter the Chad or Congo regions. Many
antelopes have in the near past and present ranged between Mediterranean
Algeria on the north-west, the equatorial Nile basin, and southern-most
Africa, but have not appeared in the western half of Africa.
The region therefore into which plunged the author of this book, with
the concurrence and assistance of an educated Egyptian of Al Azhar
University, has been of great interest to all students of Africa.
Rohlfs’s visit had almost become legendary and at best its reports were
fragmentary and inconclusive. The Kufara oasis was the half-way house
between the mysterious and recalcitrant Negro kingdom of Wadai and the
Mediterranean coast. Wadai was the last of the great Negro States of
Central Africa to come under European supervision and control. But even
after Wadai—to the great benefit of North Central Africa—was conquered
by the French, and its slave trade abolished, the oasis of Kufara
remained for a few more years a legendary district, perhaps mainly
created by the excited imagination of a thwarted German explorer, who
had already crossed Africa from the Mediterranean to the Benue and the
Niger, but who had scarcely penetrated to this secret land of water and
palm trees in the centre of the Libyan Desert than he had to leave it.
We now realise from the work of Mr. Harding King in 1913 and from Mrs.
Forbes’s book, with its admirable photographs and both vivid and
circumstantial descriptions, what this series of oases, salt lakes, and
underground fountains means in the middle of the Libyan Desert. It is
one of the vestiges of a formerly well-watered country ten, twenty or
more thousand years ago. It was a more habitable region possibly at a
distance in time not exceeding five thousand years. To it came, long
ago, when the intervening desert was much more traversable, clans of the
Tu, Tebu or Tibu people, nowadays the dominating population of Fazan and
Tibesti. A few Tebu—one or two hundred—still linger in Kufara on
sufferance, the semi-slaves of the Zwiya Arabs. The author is able to
give her readers an admirable photograph of one of these lingering Tebu
of Kufara.
Who and what are the variously named Tu, Teda, Tibu, or Tebu tribes?
They are seemingly of considerable antiquity, the Garamantes of
Herodotos and the Romans, the Tedamansii of Claudius Ptolomæus, the
Alexandrian geographer of the second century. They represent one of the
numerous races between the White man and the Negro, but in their purer
and more northern extension they are a people with a preponderance of
white man stock. The skin is dark-tinted and the hair has a kink, a curl
about it; but the physiognomy is that of the Mediterranean peoples,
except for the occasionally tumid lips. They do not indeed differ very
much in appearance, facially, from the Hamitic peoples of North-east
Africa; but their language is utterly dissimilar. With this and that
corruption, change, and deficiency, it has become the speech of Bornu
(Kanuri), Kanem, Ennedi, northern Darfur, Tibesti, Tummo, and southern
Fazan. Commerce even carries its dialects into Tripoli. But this Tibu-
Kanuri group of tongues has no discernible connection with any other
African group and is utterly dissimilar in syntax and in word-roots from
the sex-denoting Hamitic, Libyan, Egyptian and Semitic languages of
North and North-east Africa. Neither does it offer any point of
resemblance with the Nubian group, with the Niger families, with Songhai
or Fulfulde. It is rather hurriedly called a ‘Negro’ tongue, which
explains nothing. There seem to have been many pre-Aryan, pre-Semitic,
pre-Hamitic forms of speech generated by the White man in Europe, North
Africa and Western Asia, which, like the original language-impulse of
the Bantu and Semi-Bantu, were introduced into Tropical Africa and
subsequently adopted by the Negro, who was at all times so easily
influenced by the White invader. The Tibu speech seems to have been one
of the several distinct groups of tongues (Fula may have been another)
spoken in North Africa before that region was invaded from the east by
the Hamites and from the North-west by the Libyans. It was pushed
southwards into Fazan and thence extended across the Libyan Desert to
the oases of Kufara.
But though ranking themselves as ‘white men’ or at any rate as a racial
type much above the Negro, the Tibu were not quickly on the White man’s
side in religion. The ancient Garamantes became Christian only a short
time before the Moslem invasion of Tripoli; and were possibly not
Islamized until the eleventh century. Probably the Tebu of Kufara were
of some vaguely Pagan faith when their oases were invaded by the Zwiya
Arabs of Fazan two or three hundred years ago. As they only had spears
and arrows to defend themselves against the invaders who were armed with
guns, they were soon conquered, semi-enslaved, and coerced to adopt the
Muslim faith. They seem to have possessed camels of what is known as the
Teda or Tibesti breed, taller, stouter, clumsier in form than the
dromedaries of the north.
On this point hinges a good deal of interesting argument. Was there a
native camel, a wild species of the genus _Camelus_ in North-east Africa
before the domesticated camel was introduced from Arabia and Palestine
into Africa at an uncertain period coincident with the downfall of the
independence and glory of Ancient Egypt—say three thousand years ago? A
wild camel, very near in form to the Arabian species, is found fossil
and subfossil in Algeria. It must have lingered there till the arrival
of Man who possibly aided in its extinction. Were there wild camels
similarly lingering in the Teda, the Tibesti country and in Somaliland
and Galaland down to quite recent times? And have they contributed to
the formation of the domesticated camel stock of Africa?
The Zwiya conquerors of Kufara opened up relations with the Sudan, with
Ennedi, Wadai, and Darfur; and on the north with Cyrene and its
Mediterranean ports. Their oases obtained wealth and importance by
becoming a halfway-house between Eastern Europe and Central Africa, and
grew rich during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries over the trade
in ivory and Negro slaves. The importance of the Wadai-Kufara road for
camel caravans increased greatly during the second half of the last
century because, meantime, Algeria and Tunis had become more or less
controlled by Europe. Egypt was likewise supervised, constantly watched
by European powers in regard to the Slave trade. Even Tripoli and its
sea-faring trade in slaves was hampered by surveillance from Malta.
Turkey, however, was left pretty much to herself after the Berlin
Conference of 1878, for motives of international jealousy. She
strengthened her hold over Cyrene and likewise garrisoned Crete, not far
away. So that long after the Sudan slave trade had been closed in all
other directions by British and French action it remained alive and
active by way of Wadai-Kufara-and-Benghazi, till, in 1912–1913, Italy
took Tripoli and Cyrenaica from the Turks and resumed the former
protectorate of the Roman Empire in this direction.
Then—as Mrs. Forbes relates—the followers of the Senusi Brotherhood
found themselves in lively conflict with a modern-tempered European
power, and had—eventually—to come to terms with Italy.
Mrs. Forbes tells us or reminds us of the main facts and changes in
Kufara history: its occupation at an unknown and probably distant date
by the Tibu people, who may have dwelt there when the surrounding
deserts were much less arid, and when the oases and their lakes were
considerably larger. They may have been there while the Pharaohs reigned
in Egypt and before the domestication of the camel. Then she alludes to
the conquest and occupation of Kufara by the Zwiya Arabs, who seem to
have come from the eastern part of Fazan, especially an oasis named
Leshkerre. Before their coming the Tibu inhabitants seem to have called
‘Kufara’ (which in Arabic means, ‘unbelievers’, ‘heathen’) by the name
of Tazerr; and in a valuable Appendix the author relates the subsequent
history of these oases when they came under the influence of the Senusi
dynasty.
The statements in this Appendix may be in all points accurate, but it
might be interesting to the reader to give an alternative version
derived from earlier French and British writers. Some of this
information was noted when the present writer was Consul General in
Tunis, and had commenced studying the results and aims of the teaching
emanating from the Senusi confraternity, his attention having been drawn
to this movement in Muhammadanism as far back as the ’eighties of the
last century, by the influence of the Senusi missionaries on Nigeria.
The first Senusi teacher was born at or near Mastaghanem on the coast of
western Algeria towards the close of the eighteenth century. He was
styled—for short, as he had a wearisome array of names—Muhammad bin Ali
bin as-Sanusi. [Because there is no _e_ in the Arabic language you will
find a world-wide conspiracy to use that vowel in the transliteration of
Arab names. There is likewise no _o_, so that _o_ is thrust into or
before Arab names of persons, countries, and mountains in their European
rendering with an unaccountable vehemence of contrariety].
Like so many Arabs and Berbers in the history of North Africa he was a
religious enthusiast, and like all such in every faith he was willing to
die or to doom to death in defence of his unprovable religious dogmas.
He resorted to Fez for his theological studies and worked at the so-
called university in that Moroccan city till he was past his thirtieth
year. He then felt inspired to preach reform in Islam, and to that end
set his face westward, expounding his tenets first in Algeria (about to
be distracted by the French entry), then in southern Tunis and Tripoli.
At last he reached Egypt and enrolled himself as a student at the great
Muhammadan university of Al Azhar in Cairo. But his tenets, when he
expounded them, were pronounced to be heretical, so he journeyed on to
Mecca, seeking further instruction.
At this religious capital of Islam he met among other pilgrims and
enquirers a remarkable personality, Muhammad ash-Sharif, a Negro prince
from Wadai who in 1838 became supreme monarch or Sultan of that
remarkable country in the heart of Africa. A great friendship grew up
between the white-skinned Berber (for though claiming to belong to an
Arab tribe, the first of the Senusi leaders was obviously of Berber
stock) and the black skinned Wadai prince, which affected for seventy
years or more the relations between the Senusi sect and the central
Sudan. But after the departure of the Wadai prince the relations between
Muhammad bin Ali bin as-Sanusi and the authorities of Mecca became more
and more difficult; and though the Senusi leader founded monasteries in
western Arabia he thought it better to leave that land of orthodoxy and
return to Africa.
He settled first—about 1844—near Derna in Cyrenaica.[1] This region,
once in far-back, prehistoric times a huge island, had, together with
Morocco, become the only portions of North Africa where Islamic
developments were unfettered. Yet even here, in the next decade Turkish
enquiries (after the anxiety of the Crimean War was over) irked the
first Senusi; so that in 1855 he moved from the vicinity of Derna to
Jaghabub, an oasis on the undefined borderland between Egypt and the
Tripolitan Pashalik. Hither he brought his two sons, born in 1843 and
1845. They were named Muhammad ash-Sharif and Muhammad al Mahdi, and
according to most authorities Muhammad ash-Sharif was the elder. Mrs.
Forbes, no doubt on good authority, reverses this order and puts forward
the Second Senusi—Muhammad al Mahdi—as the elder and all along the
rightful heir.
Footnote 1:
He is said to have paid another visit to Mecca in 1852.
The story related to me and preserved in several books is that one day
at Jaghabub, not long before his death in 1859, the First Senusi put his
young sons to the following test of faith. He pointed out a tall palm
tree near the mosque and ordered them to climb up it and then, putting
their faith in God, to leap off it to the ground. Muhammad ash-Sharif
shrank from the test; his younger brother had faith, climbed up the tree
to near the fronds, and then dropped to the ground and was not hurt.
Him, therefore, his father designated as his eventual successor.
Whether or not this was a true story and whether or no the Second Senusi
was the younger son of the First, he succeeded to his father’s position,
after a short interval of ‘regency’ conducted by trusty councillors;
though there seems to have been no ill-feeling between the brothers.
Under Muhammad al Mahdi, the Second Senusi, the political movement took
great amplitude. His emissaries spread far and wide over Negro and
Negroid Africa. Houses of teaching and prayer were founded in Senegal,
in western Nigeria, in Hausaland and above all throughout the Tibu
countries, Wadai and northern Darfur, as well as in Fazan, Tunis, and
Algeria. A little vague hostility was shown towards France, but not more
than towards Turkish rule, and the feeling among the Senusiya was rather
in favour of the British. When the other Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, the
Dongolese destroyer of the Egyptian Sudan, strove to enter into close
relations with Muhammad al Mahdi at Jaghabub his overtures were snubbed
very distinctly.
Unknown to himself, no doubt, the Berber blood in the Senusi leader’s
veins ranged him against violent attacks on civilised states. He did his
utmost to prevent the Arab fanaticism of the Middle Nile from spreading
to Egypt, or to Wadai and Bornu. His growing influence over Turkish
Africa attracted the interested attention of Abd-al-Hamid, Sultan of
Turkey. In 1889, the Second Senusi leader was visited at Jaghabub by the
Pasha of Tripoli escorted by an imposing force. This visit and other
actions of Abd-al-Hamid caused the Second Senusi perturbation.
Accordingly in 1894, he transferred himself and his funds and band of
officials to the Kufara oases, whither pursuit by Turkish troops would
be very difficult. From this safe retreat he intensified his relations
across the Desert with Wadai, Kanem, and Darfur. In 1900 the Second
Senusi pope (as one might by now call him) moved his headquarters from
Kufara to a rocky stronghold named Geru, in the district of Dar Gorani
in western Wadai. He did this partly in furtherance of an unfortunate
opposition to the French conquest of these perturbed regions in the very
heart of Africa. The Senusi dynasty was never enlightened enough to
perceive the wickedness of the Slave Trade, and it resented the efforts
of the French to put down the shocking slave raiding of the Wadai
Muhammadans.
The French armies however were victorious, and the Second Senusi died of
disappointment in Wadai.
The Third in succession was the son of his brother, Muhammad ash-Sharif
and was named Ahmad ash-Sharif. He was chosen by the confraternity
because the sons of Muhammad al Mahdi were deemed to be too young for
the cares and responsibilities of this Pope-like position. Ahmad ash-
Sharif re-established his capital at Kufara, but in spite of his
recognition as supreme head of the institution attempts were made by the
confraternity to ignore the death of the Second Senusi, to announce that
he was travelling on secret business, that he would one day return to
resume the supreme power vested meantime in his nephew. It is possible
this fiction was set about by those who were led to distrust the wisdom
of Ahmad the Third Senusi.
Ahmad apparently decided that the Brotherhood should offer unstinted
opposition to the French in Central Africa, and that they should ally
themselves with the Turkish Sultan whom his grandfather had derided and
opposed as an effete and heretical ruler. Between 1902 and 1909, Senusis
were fighting the French advance on Wadai and contiguous countries. In
1910 Turkish troops advanced for the first time beyond Fazan into the
Tibesti mountains and Borku. But in the following year they were
withdrawn northwards to oppose the Italian invasion of Tripoli. Sayyid
Ahmad ash-Sharif, the Senusi leader, joined Turkey after the outbreak of
the Great War in 1914 and in 1918 had to flee to Constantinople in a
submarine, as Mrs. Forbes relates. Thenceforth she becomes the sole
historian for the time being of the Senusi family, and according to her
relation we see that Idris, son of Muhammad al Mahdi, and grandson of
the First Senusi teacher has become the fourth ruler of his family and
has been accorded by Italy and Britain the title of a Prince (Amir). His
domain is now recognized as covering the inner region of Cyrenaica
between the Egyptian frontier on the east, that of Fazan on the west, of
the coast region of Cyrene on the north and approximately on the south
of the 20th degree of N. Latitude. Jedabia as marked on Mrs. Forbes’s
map is very near the Mediterranean coast, and Zuetina, also referred to,
is actually a seaport which is to be the outlet of a hoped-for Sudan
trade coming from Wadai. Whether this important outlet is intended to
come within the Sharifian domain of Sayyid Idris is not quite clear: it
hardly seems likely that at present Italy would allow a quasi-
independent Arab power to attain to a port on the Mediterranean between
the provinces of Cyrene and Tripoli.
Italy of course retains from an international point of view the
suzerainty over the Senusi Prince, whose access to the Mediterranean she
could not permit to be abused or allow it to shelter a revival of the
slave trade, practised so long by the Turks, and at no time denounced by
the followers of the Senusi.
Somewhat similarly to the action of Italy since the conclusion of the
War, the British have been striving to create an independent or nearly-
independent Arab state in Mesopotamia; they have evacuated Persia
(though it is still threatened by the Russian Soviet) and they are
endeavouring to recreate a wholly independent congeries of Arab States
in Arabia, especially in the case of the Hijaz, the Domain of Muhammad
and the region in which he was born, lived, and worked.
What will Islam do for the world of civilisation in return? Will it give
up, once and for all and completely, the age-long attempt to maintain
slavery as an institution, to override and enslave the Negro, to
persecute the Christian, the Jew, and the harmless pagan? Will it cease
to despise true Science, and encourage unfettered education? For a
century or two after the Arab conquests of Spain and Mesopotamia,
education took great strides, and the civilisation of the Old World was
really somewhat advanced. Then followed a heart-breaking Muhammadan
reaction, as bad in its effects as Byzantine Christianity. Under the
Turks, more especially, Islam was made the cover for a disastrous check
to learning, to investigation, to mastery over the planet and its
resources. Muhammadanism became the rallying ground for the enemies of
Civilisation. Its teaching became and has remained incredibly puerile
and futile. Compare the curriculum of Al Azhar with that of British,
American, French, German, Italian, Austrian or Spanish universities! The
author of this interesting story seems content and hopeful as to the
progress of Senusi teaching. I, having traced the downward course of so
many Muhammadan movements, split always on the rock of Education,
reserve my opinion, and meantime distrust all Islamic agitation.
H. H. JOHNSTON.
_July 25, 1921._
PREFACE
I feel this Libyan story needs a few words of explanation, for owing to
the peculiar circumstances in which it was undertaken it is not the
usual consecutive and comprehensive book of travel compiled _after_ the
return of an expedition wherein the traveller is able to review the
journey as a whole. Reading such works, I have so often found myself
asking, “And then what happened?” or “I wonder what he felt at the
moment?” Well, this is a very simple account of “what happened next.” In
no way does it pretend to be a scientific record of exploration, for,
owing to the ever urgent necessity of secrecy and disguise, the use of
most instruments was an impossibility.
The spirit of the story changes with the mood and the method of its
development. It was written in so many odd ways at so many odd times—
under a scented sage-bush in the sunset while the slaves were putting up
our tent, or huddled inside a flea-bag when the nights were very cold.
Sometimes, when life was exciting, it was scribbled on a camel under the
shelter of a barracan! Twice, at least, the last chapter according to
all human calculations was completed in the hope that the tattered copy
books would somehow find their way back to civilization and the fate of
the expedition be known up till its last moments. It is a daily record
of success and failure, of a few months in an alien world, showing how
much of that world’s spirit was absorbed. Because, in real life, the big
things and the little things are inextricably mixed up together, so in
Libya at one moment one worried because one’s native boots were full of
holes, at the next perhaps, one wondered how long one would be alive to
wear them. This book records the former mood as well as the latter,
because both at the time were equally important.
Naturally such an impossible, illogical journey leaves one indebted to
so many people that it is difficult to pick out those to whom one owes
most.
I have dedicated the story of our adventures to my co-explorer Ahmed Bey
Hassanein, for his knowledge of the Senussi acquired during his
secretaryship to the Talbot Mission in 1916 was invaluable to me, and he
was the loyalest of my allies throughout the expedition. His tact and
eloquence so often saved the situation when my Arabic failed, and we
laughed and fought through all our difficulties together.
Long before my Kufara expedition merged from impossible dream to
probable fact, many officers stationed in the Western Desert lent me
their knowledge of the Senussi oasis, gathered from careful
conversations with Beduin sheikhs and merchants, while from Khartum, El
Fasher and Cairo came maps and route reports which were most useful.
I now know that we might have benefited exceedingly from Rohlfs’s most
careful and valuable writings on the subject of his North African
travels, but unfortunately we only possessed his “Kufra,” which does not
attempt much description of the oasis he was the first European to
visit, confining itself chiefly to the relation of the story of the
destruction of his camp and the break-up of the expedition. In a Journal
of the African Society the great German explorer gives the exact bearing
on which he marched from Jalo. Had we known this at the time we might
have arrived at Taiserbo in spite of the error in the extent of
vegetation marked on the map.[2] We picked up the traces of Rohlfs’s
journey at Buseima, where some of the inhabitants remembered him as
Mustapha Bey. At Hawari several sheikhs told us stories about his
adventures there and at Buma, but at no point could we find any trace of
Stecker having visited the oases. On the contrary we were categorically
assured by Sheikhs Mohammed el Madeni, Bu Regea and Sidi Omar at
Buseima, and by Sheikhs Musa Squaireen, Mansur Bu Badr, Musa Gharibeel
and Sidi Zarrug at Hawari that Rohlfs had no other European with him.
Stecker was the surveyor of the party, and in view of the difference in
the position he assigned to Buma and that which we believe it to occupy,
we made the most exhaustive inquiries as to the personnel of the German
expedition; but while we collected much intimate information concerning
Rohlfs, all evidence offered us stated positively that he was not
accompanied by Stecker at Hawari, Buma, or on his return journey to
Buseima. On these occasions he was always described as being “with his
cook, Ali, and a big horse.”
Footnote 2:
On the Egyptian survey map (2,000,000 series) 1912, re-issued 1915,
the green area of Taiserbo vegetation runs across longitude 22° and
touches latitude 26°. It will be seen from the map of our route that
we marched across this angle without finding Kusebeya or any trace of
vegetation.
The gracious reception accorded me by H.E. the Governor of Cyrenaica,
Senator de Martino, made me regretful that I could not stay longer in
his admirable colony. To him, to General di Vita and the Cavaliere
Queirolo, head of the Ufficio Politico at Benghazi, I owe my delightful
journey to Jedabia and a store of invaluable information regarding the
country to which they most kindly facilitated my visit.
To any reader it will at once be evident that, after the generous help
of the Italians in Cyrenaica, the whole success of the expedition
depended on the good will of the Emir Mohammed Idris es Senussi and of
his brother, Sayed Rida. It is absolutely impossible for any European to
set foot into Libya without the permission of the Emir or his wakil. We
were welcomed by the Sayeds with a hospitality that reminded us of the
Arab greeting to a guest, “All that is mine is thine.” Whatever we asked
for was given us, multiplied a hundredfold. Sidi Idris and his brother
were so prodigal of their generosity, so unfailing of their help, that
we shall feel eternally their debtors.
Since surprise has been expressed that we should have met with any
opposition in Libya once we were provided with Sidi Idris’s passport, I
should like to explain that we had no permit from the Emir himself. The
letter referred to throughout the book was merely a casual, personal
letter expressing his willingness to receive us. We had, however, a
passport from Sayed Rida authorizing the Sitt Khadija, a Moslem working
for the good of Islam and the Senussi, and A. M. Bey Hassanein to visit
the country. This document insured us the most hospitable welcome from
the official classes in spite of the plots of the Bazama family and of
Abdullah, to which plots alone I imagine we owe the adventures of our
journey.
Because of the good will of the Sayeds we found many friends and allies
in their country, notably Mohammed Quemish and Yusuf el Hamri, who
accompanied us through 1,000 miles of desert till, somewhere east of
Munasib Pass, we fell into the hands of the Frontier Districts
Administration, and thereby hangs a tale, for so few of us in England
know for how much she is responsible abroad!
Egypt is like a tadpole, her head the Delta, and her tail the long
curving valley of the Nile. Therefore, of all countries, she is the most
vulnerable of attack, and never could she defend her own borders!
Mohammed Ali subsidized the sheikhs of the Wilad Ali to police his
frontiers. Before the War the Egyptian Coastguards built their forts
along the Mediterranean and Red Sea shores and pushed their outposts
south into the deserts, but during the War a far more efficient force
sprang into being. Nowadays the Frontier Districts Administration, a
kingdom within a kingdom, is responsible for the safety of “all country
not watered by the Nile” between the Sudan and the Mediterranean, the
Red Sea and Cyrenaica. The territory is divided into four Provinces, and
under a Military Administrator in Cairo, Brigadier-General Hunter, C.B.,
C.M.G., the governors and officials combine the complicated duties of
protector and judge, guide, instructor and friend to the tens of
thousand Beduin who might at any time prove a thorn in the flesh of
Egypt. This exceedingly capable organization, or such portion of it as
officiates in the Western Desert, took charge of us before we reached
Siwa, and to them, especially to Colonel MacDonnell, Governor of the
Western Desert, and to Colonel Forth, Commandant of the Camel Corps, we
owe more than it is possible to acknowledge in a mere preface.
In fact, I find myself unconsciously including in a long list of
indebtedness the fact that, having written their names far and wide
across the Eastern Sahara, they had fortunately for me, temporarily
omitted Kufara from the itineraries of those swift dashes into the
wilderness which habitually add a couple of hundred miles or so to the
known chart of Africa!
One name is always connected with theirs, because it appears on so many
desert routes—that of Dr. Ball, F.R.G.S., the Director of the Desert
Surveys of Egypt. Encouraged by his sympathy and experience, we brought
him our rough notes and drawings and from them he compiled the map of
our journey. I think, therefore, that my readers’ gratitude should be
nearly as great as my own!
ROSITA FORBES.
_Abu Menes,
March, 1921._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY SIR HARRY JOHNSTON vii
PREFACE xxi
CHAPTER
I WE ENTER ON THE GREAT ADVENTURE 1
II PLANS FOR THE FLIGHT 21
III THE ESCAPE FROM JEDABIA 39
IV ACROSS THE DESERT WITH SHE-IB 64
V TRIUMPHANT ARRIVAL AT JALO 88
VI CHRISTMAS IN THE DESERT 112
VII A FAULTY GUIDE ON A WATERLESS WAY 126
VIII THE LAKE IN THE DESERT 148
IX TREACHERY AT HAWARI 172
X FEASTS IN THE HOLY PLACE 185
XI THE “CITIES” OF KUFARA 203
XII THE FLIGHT FROM TAJ 222
XIII THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS 251
XIV THE ELUSIVE DUNES 270
XV THE END OF THE JOURNEY 291
MAP 310
APPENDIXES 311
GLOSSARY 341
INDEX 345
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ROSITA FORBES _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE EMIR IDRIS ES SENUSSI 16
THE AUTHOR AS A BEDUIN SHEIK 17
AHMED MOHAMMED BEY HASSANEIN, MY FELLOW EXPLORER 32
SAYED RIDA ES SENUSSI 33
THE AUTHOR AT JEDABIA 48
THE AUTHOR ON CAMEL-BACK 48
BEDUIN WOMAN AT JEDABIA 49
NOMAD TENTS NEAR JEDABIA 64
OUR SOLDIER SLAVES AND THE GUIDE ABDULLAH 64
WELL AT JEDABIA 65
NOMAD ENCAMPMENTS ROUND JEDABIA 65
SAYED RIDA ES SENUSSI 80
THE AUTHOR IN BEDUIN DRESS 81
UNLOADING ON THE SECOND DAY FROM JEDABIA 96
WADI FARIG; CAMELS AT THE WELL 96
A HALT FOR THE NIGHT 97
CAMP OF MOJABRA MERCHANTS AT BIR RASSAM 97
HASSANEIN BEY AND MOJABRAS DRINKING TEA 128
FLOCKS WATERING AT BIR RASSAM 128
SHE-IB’S CARAVAN ON THE MARCH BETWEEN WADI FARIG AND AUJELA 129
OUR CARAVAN APPROACHING AUJELA 129
THE MOSQUE AT AUJELA, WHERE IS BURIED THE CLERK OF THE PROPHET MOHAMMED
144
DESERT WELL AT JALO 144
THE AUTHOR WITH THE TWO SLAVES—ZEINAB AND HAUWA 145
OUR CAMP AT BUTTAFAL 145
CARAVAN ON THE MARCH BETWEEN BUTTAFAL AND TAISERBO 160
THE MOUNTAINS OF BUSEIMA 160
CARAVAN IN DUNE COUNTRY NEAR BUSEIMA 161
THE FIRST MEETING BETWEEN THE FAQRUN FAMILY AND OUR PARTY AT BUSEIMA
161
GARDENS AND LAKE AT BUSEIMA 176
THE AUTHOR ON A CAMEL AT BUSEIMA 176
ZOUIA WOMEN AT BUSEIMA 177
AT BUSEIMA; TEACHING THE FAQRUN FAMILY TO USE FIELD GLASSES 177
THE FOUR EKHWAN WHO RECEIVED US AT TAJ 192
HASSANEIN BEY TALKING TO EKHWAN AT TAJ WHILE THE AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPHED
THEM 192
THE KAIMAKAAN AT TAJ 193
ZAWIA TOWER AT TAJ 208
KUFARA WADI, FROM TAJ 208
BARRAKING; A TOO SUDDEN DESCENT 209
A LUNCH IN KUFARA VALLEY 209
A TEBU AT AWARDEL IN KUFARA 224
OUR CAMP AT AWARDEL 225
LOADING AT AWARDEL 225
CAMP AT MEHEMSA; YUSUG, MOHAMMED AND AMAR 240
THE AUTHOR ASLEEP ON A CAMEL 240
JAGHABUB 241
WELL IN ZAWIA AT JAGHABUB 241
OUR HOST AT JAGHABUB 256
SIDI IDRIS’S HOUSE AT JAGHABUB 257
MOSQUE AND QUEBA OF SIDI BEN ALI AT JAGHABUB 257
MY LONELY PICNIC IN KUFARA WADI 272
A GLASS OF MINT TEA ON THE WAY TO SIWA 272
DOCUMENTS OF WELCOME GIVEN AT BUSEIMA AND KUFARA (TAJ) 273
THE SECRET OF THE
SAHARA: KUFARA
CHAPTER I
WE ENTER ON THE GREAT ADVENTURE
The great adventure began at Jedabia, 190 kilometres from Benghazi as
the crow flies. It is only a group of scattered sand houses, with the
mysterious windowless walls of the East, flung down on a wide space of
white rock and sand, yet it is the home of the great Senussi family. We
arrived there on November 28, 1920, having come by divers methods across
the stretch of stony desert which lies to the south-west of Benghazi,
the capital of Cyrenaica. It is an almost deserted country of flat
reddish sand, sprinkled with rocks and tufts of coarse grey grass which
provides food for rare camel caravans and fuel for the Beduin fires.
There are no made roads, but rough tracks link the scattered Italian
forts, manned by companies of stalwart Eritreans and irregular Arab
levies. To the south, the _altipiano_ rises in a faint line of purple
cliff which catches wonderful reflections in the setting sun. Otherwise
the vista is intensely monotonous save for an occasional encampment of
Auwaghir. Unlike the solid black “beit esh shar”[3] of the Syrian or
Algerian nomad, their tents are of the poorest description, made of
patched sacking of various grey-brown shades; they are very low-pitched,
so that even in the centre one cannot stand upright.
Footnote 3:
A glossary of Arabic words and phrases used in the book will be found
on p. 337.
In the dry season, wherever there are wells, may be seen congregated
flocks of sheep and goats and herds of camels numbering many thousands.
After rain, however, so much water lies out on the rocky ground that the
animals can drink wherever they like, so the country presents its most
deserted appearance.
Benghazi is a little white town lying on the very edge of the
Mediterranean breakers, unprotected by harbour or mole. Famine and
disease considerably reduced its population during the War and the suqs
are almost deserted. An occasional donkey with scarlet tassels and a
load of fresh dates passes down the Sidi Shabi where European stores and
native booths stand side by side. A few camels come in from the country
half buried beneath huge sacks of grain. In the evening there is a
mustering of bearded merchants at the little café by the mosque, while
contemptuous Askari in scarlet tarboushes and swinging capes stroll by,
smoking Italian cigarettes, but the life of the town is confined to the
European quarter containing the hotel and the Government offices.
The biggest of the white, Oriental-looking buildings is Government
House, with a double line of great Moorish arches decorating its
imposing façade. So different from the windowless dwellings of Jedabia
with their discreet high-walled yards, yet it was there that I first saw
Es Sayed Mohammed Idris bin es Sayed el Mahdi es Senussi, the man whose
power is felt even beyond the boundaries of Libya and Cyrenaica. The
Italians and the Senussi had ratified a few days before the provisional
treaty of 1916 and there were great festas at Benghazi in honour of the
newly made Emir, who was spending a few days in the capital on his way
to Italy to visit the King.
There had been an official reception and down the broad steps moved the
black mass of Italian uniforms splashed with the vivid blue of their
gala sashes and the glint of their gay-ribboned medals. Foremost came
the Governor, Senator de Martino, in the green and gold uniform of a
Knight of Malta, and General Di Vita, with his splendid rows of
decorations. Between them walked a figure which dominated the group and
yet gave one the impression of being utterly remote from it. Robed all
in white, in silken kaftan and trailing burnus, the rich kufiya flowing
beneath a golden agal, with no jewel or embroidery to mark his state,
Sidi Idris came slowly forward leaning on a silver-handled stick. An
Italian officer murmured in my ear, “Give him a longer beard and he
would be the pictured Christ!” He was right. The ascetic leader of one
of the greatest religious confraternities in the world had the strange,
visionary eyes of the prophets of old. His long face had hollows under
the cheek-bones. The lips were pale and the olive skin almost waxen. He
looked out, under a broad brow, dreamily, far beyond the pageant
prepared in his honour, to realms even more remote than his own
untrodden deserts. Thus might the Nazarene have walked among the
legionaries of Rome!
The following day I met the Emir at a dinner which Omar Pasha gave in
his honour. Before the other guests arrived we conversed, I in faltering
Egyptian Arabic, he in the classical language of the Hejaz. In the same
flowing white robes he sat in a great chair at the head of the room and
in a long line beside him sat the ekhwan who were to accompany him to
Italy. They were a picturesque sight in their multi-coloured robes of
ceremony. Prominent among them was the General Ali Basha el Abdya, a
delightful bearded personage with a complete set of gold teeth, which
touch of modernity contrasted oddly with his crimson kaftan and splendid
dark burnus bordered with silver. Beside him sat the venerable Sharuf
Basha el Ghariam, who had been the teacher of Sidi Idris and was now his
most trusted councillor. His jerd was a sombre brown, and the end of it
covered his head over a close-fitting white ma-araka, but his kaftan,
with long embroidered sleeves, was vivid rose. He had a kindly, serious
face and seemed much more interested in his surroundings than the
others.
I stumbled over my words of formal greeting, expressed in the
unaccustomed plural, wondering whether the man who looked so infinitely
remote and uninterested would even listen to what I was saying. The
brooding eyes softened suddenly and a smile that was veritable light
flashed across his face. If graciousness be the token of royalty, then
Sidi Idris is crowned by his smile! For such a look the Beduin
prostrates himself to kiss the dust the holy feet have pressed!
Thereafter we talked of my journey and he blessed me in his frail voice,
smiling still and saying, “May Allah give you your wish!” I tried to
tell him of my love of the desert, of how I was happiest when, from a
narrow camp bed, I could look at the triangular patch of starlight
beyond the flap of my tent. “I, too,” he said, “cannot stay more than a
month in one place. Then I must move, for I love the _scent_ of the
desert.” It is true there is a _scent_ in the desert, though there may
be no flower or tree or blade of grass within miles. It is the essence
of the untrodden, untarnished earth herself!
We dined gorgeously on lambs roasted whole and stuffed with all sorts of
good things—rice, raisins and almonds—and on strange, sticky sweetmeats
that I loved and bowls of cinnamon-powdered junket and, best of all, the
delicious thick Arab coffee, but the Emir ate little and spoke less. The
Senussi law forbids drinking and smoking as also the use of gold for
personal adornment, so after the meal glasses of sweet tea flavoured
with mint leaves were handed round to the solemn ekhwan, who took no
notice whatever of their fellow guests, consisting of the Governor, the
general, the captain of the light cruiser which was to carry the Senussi
to Italy, and myself. Omar Pasha made me sit beside the Emir, who
suddenly turned to his venerable followers, “Come and salute this lady,”
he said, and instantly, with the unquestioning obedience of children,
they clambered up from their low chairs and moved in a body towards me.
“Aselamu Aleikum” they murmured gravely as they shook my hand without
raising their eyes, but giving me the Moslem salutation to a Moslem!
Benghazi was _en fête_ those days. There were so many ceremonies—a
review, a great dinner in the Governor’s palace in honour of Italy’s new
ally—so I did not see Sidi Idris again till the last night of his stay,
when there was a general reception which brought streams of Arab
notables as well as Europeans to witness the fireworks from the wide
verandas of His Excellency’s dwelling. I saw the Emir standing aloof
from the chattering crowd, his ekhwan near him, and wondered what he
thought of us all. Half the guests were of his own race and creed, yet
not here was his real kingdom, but among the ten thousand Beduin who
spring to horse or camel at his word, among the hundred thousand
pilgrims who learn the law from his zawias! We stood together on a wind-
swept balcony and looked down at a wild dance of Abyssinian soldiers. A
thousand black figures, each bearing a flaring torch, gyrated madly in
the moonlight, yelling hoarse songs of victory and prowess. The three
things a man may be justly proud of in Abyssinia are killing a lion, an
elephant or his enemy! The fantastic dance we saw might celebrate one or
other of these achievements. Gradually whirling into tempestuous
circles, the soldiers flung their torches into flaming piles in the
centre and their chaunt rose stronger on the wind. Sayed Idris was
pleased: “You will see ceremonies like this in my country,” he said,
“but there will be no houses. You will not miss them.”
The moment the last gun, announcing the Emir’s departure for Italy, had
been fired, Hassanein Bey and I climbed into the car most kindly lent by
the Government. When he first consented to accompany me to the Libyan
Desert, where his knowledge of the language, religion and customs was
invaluable to me, Hassanein Bey assured me that he came for a rest cure.
Later on he assumed so many characters that it was somewhat difficult to
keep count. He was always the Q.M.G. of our little expedition and he
used to produce macaroons at the most impossible moments from equally
impossible places! He was a chaperon when elderly sheikhs demanded my
hand in marriage, a fanatic of the most bitter type when it was
necessary to impress the local mind, my Imam when we prayed in public, a
child when he lost his only pair of primrose yellow slippers, a cook
when we stole a bottle of Marsala from the last Italian fort and chased
a thin hen till, in desperation, she laid an egg for our _zabaglione_!
He also made the darkest plans for being a villain and murdering anyone
who interfered with our affairs, and I nervously listened to tales of
sudden disappearances in the Sahara.
However, on the day of our departure from Benghazi he was distinctly
subdued, for, on looking at our piles of camp kit and my two very small
suit-cases, I had suddenly noticed several exceedingly large and heavy
leather bags. With horror I demanded if they were all absolutely
necessary to his personal comfort. “Yes, really!” he assured me. “They
are only actual necessities. As a matter of fact they are half empty. I
thought they would be useful for putting things in.” The words were
hardly out of his mouth when one of the opulent-looking cases, slipping
from the Arab servant’s hand, burst open and deposited at my feet a
large bottle of “Heure bleue” bath salts, several packets of salted
almonds and a sticky mass of chocolates and marrons glacés, together
with a pair of patent leather shoes and a resplendent Balliol blazer.
Words failed me! “Necessities!” I stuttered as I marched towards the
camion to see that the heaviest cases of provisions were not put on top
of the rather fragile fanatis intended for carrying water.
Ten minutes after leaving Benghazi the white town with its slender
minarets had disappeared into the sand, and our camions crawled like
great grey beetles over a sunlit waste, with here and there a line of
camels black against the horizon. It was the season of sowing and the
tribes were scattered far and wide, planting the barley that would
suffice for their frugal life next year. Here and there, as we went
farther inland, a stooping figure, in close-wound white jerd, pushed a
plough drawn by a camel, while a friend guarded his labours, rifle slung
across his back. Sometimes a rare traveller on gaily caparisoned mule,
his coarse brown jerd flung over his head and hiding the scarlet
sederiya beneath, gave us grave greeting, “Marhaba!” “Bien venu!” We
spent a night at Soluk, where the wells had attracted a great flock of
sheep, black and brown, numbering about a thousand. The following day we
rode the thirty kilometres to Ghemines on wiry Arab horses with mouths
like iron beneath the wicked curved bits, and high-pommelled saddles
mounted on black sheepskins. Three irregulars of the Auwaghir band
accompanied us, generally galloping round us in circles by way of
showing off their horsemanship.
A small encampment of some half-dozen tents lay beside our path, so we
turned in to see if they would make us tea. At first they refused
because I was a Christian. Then a woman in striped red and yellow
barracan, with a heavy necklace of carved silver, came out to inspect
us. “It is all right,” she said to the others. “She is a nice little
thing and she has a Moslem with her”—this in appreciation of Hassanein
Bey’s white brocaded kufiya. They spread a scarlet camel’s hair rug for
us to sit on, but they were not really convinced of our good faith. My
companion began asking the men if they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
“Not yet,” said the oldest wistfully. “What is written is written. If
Allah wills it, I shall go.”
We were rapidly making friends when a fierce-looking individual with a
hard weather-beaten face and stern eyes appeared. He carried tea and
sugar, but bargained for them violently, thinking we were both the
scorned Nasrani. When we told him we knew Sayed Idris, he laughed in our
faces. “Our lord Idris is travelling,” he said. “Would you like to see a
letter from him?” I asked. Awe showed on all their faces, and their eyes
followed Hassanein Bey’s every movement as he pulled out the somewhat
crumpled envelope from his pocket. They read the superscription
reverently, and then one by one kissed it with passionate earnestness
and gravely pressed it to their foreheads. They returned it in complete
silence. Without a word the atmosphere changed. The fanatic looked at us
with humble yearning. The old man’s eyes were glazed. We knew that we
could have told these three men to get up and follow us to an unknown
destination and they would have obeyed with unquestioning, ungrudging
faith. “Sidi Idris has gone to visit the King of Italy,” I said. “He has
been made an Emir.” They accepted the statement indifferently. How could
a mere king confer honour on the man whom Allah himself had
distinguished above all others living? As we remounted the old man
kissed my hand with tender eyes, murmuring, “Inshallah ma temut illa
Islam,” and we galloped away amidst the wild “Ullala-een” of the women
and children.
Ghemines to Zuetina meant 120 kilometres in a camion over a very bad
sandy track, but that night I slept in a tent for the first time for six
months. There was a wonderful starry sky with a full moon, and a Senussi
sheikh rode in to see us on a splendid grey horse with a scarlet saddle.
The high pommels back and front and the wide stirrups were of silver,
and the purple-tasselled bridle was heavily embossed with the same
metal. Sayed Mohammed Hilal es Senussi is a cousin of Sidi Idris and a
brother of the Sayed Ahmed es Sherif who fled to Turkey at the end of
the War. A kindly, cheerful personage, he apparently had cut adrift from
the stern rules of his order and found charm in a semi-European life.
His language was so full of rhetorical flowers that I found it difficult
to understand, but he lent me an excellent horse for the journey to
Jedabia. He also requested me to deliver to his cousin, Sayed Rida, a
poetic epistle which began, “Oh freshness of my eyes, may Allah bless
your morning with peace and joy.”
The sand dunes of Zuetina gave way to a flat, colourless waste tufted
with grey brushwood. As we turned our horses’ heads inland tiny jerboas
scuttered into their holes at our approach, and occasionally a great
hawk wheeled above our heads. Otherwise there was no sign of life save
one solitary horseman in white jerd on a white horse and a boy sitting
on a pile of stones playing an odd little tune on a wooden flute. Our
grey Arab mounts were tired when at last we mounted a low rise and saw
before us a fringe of patched Beduin tents. It was the first step on a
long journey. Everything was uncertain. There were so many difficulties
to be surmounted, but we felt that now, at least, the last trace of
Europe lay behind us. We breathed more freely. We both loved the desert
and the dwellers therein, and we felt that they must understand and
respond to our sympathy. I turned to Hassanein Bey as the sandy track
ran between the blind mud walls that I had seen in so many countries. “I
feel as if I had left behind me the last shred of civilisation. The
simplicity of life is beginning to impregnate me. I believe that old
Beduin’s blessing has bewitched me. When we leave the desert I shall be
a Moslem.”
We sent to ask if Sayed Rida el Mahdi es Senussi, the brother and wakil
of Sidi Idris, would receive us and we waited for an answer at the edge
of the suq, where grave, bearded men, with the wistful eyes of those who
look at far horizons, stood in white-robed groups. A few camels lay
beside piles of grain, but otherwise the wide open spaces between the
square walled-in yards, where were Arab houses, were deserted. The
banner of the Senussi family, a silver crescent and star on a black
ground, floated over two of the houses and the protesting roar of laden
camels came from one of the larger enclosures, for Sayed Safi ed Din,
cousin of Sidi Idris and brother of the banished Ahmed, was travelling
to the interior the following day with the whole of his family and sixty
beasts of burden.
A soldier of the Arab guard brought us news that the Sayed would receive
us at once and we dismounted in one of the windowless yards before the
door of a big white house. We were ushered into the usual Arab reception
room with a stiff row of crimson brocaded chairs and sofas round the
walls and a table covered by a beautiful embroidered satin cloth in the
centre. Sayed Rida came forward to meet us with a reflection of his
brother’s smile. One liked him at once. One appreciated instantly his
warm kindliness and hospitality. Sidi Idris is a mystic imbued with the
aloof dignity of another world, but his wakil is young, spontaneous and
sympathetic, with a very simple, unaffected manner. He offered us
immediately a house to live in while we were in Jedabia and put at our
disposal a cook and two other servants. He made me talk Arabic to him
and corrected my mistakes with his broadest smile. Sweet tea, flavoured
with mint, appeared in delightful, painted glass cups, and I soon felt
as if I had known our host for years. He was amused and interested in
our divers journeys. He made plans to show us a falcon hunt. He wanted
to give us instantly anything from horses to dates. In fact, I felt that
I was in the presence of a magician who could wave his wand and produce
the wish of my heart! In appearance Sayed Rida is large and imposing
with a round, olive face and very dark eyes, soft as velvet, which
crinkle up humorously as he smiles widely, showing strong white teeth.
He wore a black jelabia under his striped silk jerd, snowy white, and a
rolled white turban above a red ma-araka. Arab hospitality is famous
throughout the world, but we left the dignified presence of Sayed Rida
feeling almost overwhelmed at his gracious welcome.
Our temporary home fascinated me. A solitary door pierced the mysterious
expanse of yellow wall made of sun-dried blocks of sand of all sizes and
shapes. One passed through a small roofed court to a wide sunlit yard
whose high walls ensure the complete privacy of an Arab family.
Hassanein Bey had a small room at one end and I a great high chamber,
hung with texts from the Koran. We were a kingdom to ourselves, for
there was a well just under my window, charcoal in an outhouse and a
large yard beyond where we could have housed camels and horses. As it
was, we stored our simple outfit in it, for the evening was dry and
fine. We knew from the beginning that we must travel light and that our
final success might depend on our capability for riding fast and far. We
might have to leave all our luggage by the way and, disguised as Beduin
camel-drivers, slip away in the night into the uncharted land where none
may follow.
Thus, besides our sacks of rice, tea and sugar—the two latter intended
for gifts to Beduins who helped us on our journey—we had only a single
fly tent, eleven feet by eight feet, which could be divided into two by
means of a canvas curtain, a waterproof ground-sheet and a couple of
beds which rolled into our immensely thick, wool-lined sleeping sacks, a
small army canteen that was so heavy that we had grave doubts as to its
eventual fate, a canvas washing basin and a shamadan case complete with
vast supply of candles, for I foresaw burning much midnight wax over
note-books and maps. We had reduced our provisions to the minimum which
would support human life for four months, such as coffee, tins of army
rations, slabs of chocolate, tins of cocoa and milk already mixed, bully
beef, vegetables to avoid scurvy, and malted milk tablets, but the daily
ration was absurdly small, for we trusted to supplement it with dates
and rice.
By the light of Hassanein Bey’s electric torch we picked our way back
over flat white rock and sand to Saved Rida’s house to dine. This time
we found our host accompanied by Sayed Safi ed Din, “the little
warrior,” as he is called among the tribes. He is a boy with a
vivacious, pale face, a charming manner and a ready wit. He is
intelligent and, far more than the others, he is interested in the ways
of Europe. “I think we should get on well,” he said, “for you are as
curious about me as I am about you!”
The memory of that dinner will haunt me for a long time, for it
consisted of twelve courses, of which eight were meat in one form or
another. We began eating at seven-thirty and at ten-thirty the
beautifully scented tea with sprigs of mint made its welcome appearance.
During these three hours we ate soup, chicken, hashed mutton, slices of
roast mutton, aubergines stuffed with sausage meat, fried chops,
shoulder of mutton cooked in batter, ragout of mutton with vegetables,
stuffed tomatoes, boiled mutton with marrow, savoury rice and sweet
omelette. It can be easily imagined that the feast left us a little
silent and comatose, but not so our host. He was literally brimming over
with kindness and forethought. I was suffering at the time from a
severely dislocated foot, which had not been improved by the long ride,
and I was obliged to hobble in one shoe and a swollen native slipper by
the aid of a stick. Sayed Rida slipped away for a minute in the middle
of the meal and when we left the house, lo and behold, a horse was
waiting for me outside the door! His kindliness was as simple and
natural as his whole bearing. We asked him if he travelled much and he
replied, “I have not time. I have so much work. You know it is just like
planting a garden. Everything grows and grows till one’s time is full!”
This from the Emir’s wakil, whose word was borne across half the deserts
of the world, to Nigeria, to the Sudan, to the outposts of Morocco, to
the doors of the “House of Allah” (Mecca).
I remember opening my shutters that night to a flood of moonlight as
clear as the day. A faint myrrh-scented breeze, icy cold from the
Sahara, came in, and I wondered whether it had blown over the unknown
oasis we hoped to reach. We had had a long talk that evening of past
difficulties and future plans. In Italy Kufara represents the goal of so
many hopes, in Cyrenaica the ambition of so many daring young political
officers, that it is difficult to realise that in England it is an
unknown name. The sacred place of the Sahara, the far-off oasis, six
hundred kilometres from Jalo, which in itself is seven days’ rapid
journey from the outskirts of civilisation, is spoken of with awe and
longing in Benghazi. “I will tell you a great secret,” said the Italian
major who had spent a couple of days with Sidi Idris at Jaghabub, and
had therefore penetrated many hundreds of kilometres farther into the
interior than any of his compatriots, “Some day I want to go to Kufara.
No one has ever been there except Rohlfs, forty years ago, and he saw
nothing—nothing at all!”
Without going deeply into the story of the Senussi confraternity, it may
be explained that their founder, Sidi Mohammed Ben Ali es Senussi,
preached his doctrine of a pure and ascetic Islam from Morocco to Mecca,
but his teachings met with their greatest success in Cyrenaica, where
the Beduin had almost lapsed from the faith of their fathers. Rapidly
his zawia spread along the coast, and his authority was acknowledged by
the Sultan of Wadai, who made him responsible for the caravans
traversing the great deserts of Wadai, the Fezzan and Lake Chad. Thus
the stern beliefs of the Senussi spread with every caravan that went
into the interior. Mohammed Ben Ali, so holy that he never unveiled his
face to his disciples, so honoured that his followers prostrated
themselves to kiss his footprints, died at Jaghabub in 1850 and left to
his son, Mohammed el Mahdi, the leadership of one of the greatest and
fiercest religious confraternities in the world. Their laws were harsh—
for even smelling of smoke a man might lose his right hand! Their hatred
of the infidel was fanatical. They ousted the Zouia and Tebu from their
ancient homes in Kebabo and established impregnably their holy of holies
in this oasis which nature herself had protected by surrounding it with
a belt of mighty dunes and two hundred and fifty miles of waterless
desert.
Kufara, the Kebabo of old, lies some six hundred kilometres south,
faintly south-east, of Jalo. It is the heart of the Eastern Sahara and
the centre of its trade, for the only big caravan route from the Sudan
and Wadai to the north passes through it, yet the journey is so
difficult that none but the strongest caravans can attempt it. From the
well at Buttafal, a day’s journey south of Jalo, seven hard, waterless
days bring the traveller to Zieghen, where there is a well, but no
fodder or oasis. After that he must continue another five days, two of
which are through dunes, before he reach Hawari, the outskirts of the
Kufara group, sometimes considered by the Arabs to be a separate oasis
because it is divided from the main group by a chain of mountains. This
is the main route and the easiest. It continues to Wadai.
To the west of this track lie three other oases. The first, Taiserbo, is
also seven days’ waterless journey from Buttafal and it is rarely
approached, for it has neither civil, religious nor commercial
importance, but its Tebu ruins might make it of interest historically.
Some hundred and fifty kilometres beyond in a south-westerly direction
is Buseima, which is famous for its dates, for which caravans sometimes
visit it, and still farther south lies Ribiana, to all description a
lawless spot from which come the marauding bands which make the
neighbourhood of Buseima exceedingly dangerous.
Of course, all this information was acquired at a later date. When I
arrived at Jedabia I knew less than nothing of Libyan geography. I did
not know that the principal villages in Kufara were Jof, the seat of
government and Taj, the holy of holies of the Senussi faith. I did not
know that mountains and lakes, fields of tamarisk and acacia, peaches,
grapes and figs were to be found in this Garden of Eden lost amid the
impenetrable sands, between the Dakhla Desert to the east, untraversed
by Europeans, and to the west the trackless waste stretching to Uau
Szerir at the edge of Tripolitania, to which remote prison some of the
unfortunate survivors of the Miani column were sent as prisoners. To me,
Kufara was almost a mirage. It represented the secret which the Sahara
had rigidly guarded for so long against Christian eyes. The tragic story
of Rohlfs’ ill-fated expedition fired my enthusiasm to reach this centre
of the world’s most fanatical confraternity, the unknown, mysterious
country untrod by foot of stranger, be he Christian or Moslem.
[Illustration: THE EMIR IDRIS ES SENUSSI]
Having regard to the amazing difficulties of the journey and the almost
maniacal hatred with which strangers are regarded, it is natural that,
with one possible exception, no European should ever have been able to
reach the sacred cluster of zawias and morabits at Taj. A French
prisoner spent some time in Kufara during the war; he was sent there
from Uau Szerir by order of Sayed Ahmed. Over forty years ago a German
explorer made a very gallant attempt to solve the mystery of the far-off
oasis. In 1879 the Kaiser Wilhelm I sent a scientific expedition to
Libya consisting of four men—Rohlfs, Stecker, Eckhart and Hubner. It was
backed by the whole power of Turkey. It carried magnificent presents
from the Emperor. It was laden with cases of silver and gold. Hostages
were held at Benghazi, while Rohlfs led his party to the southern
deserts. He left Jalo on July 5 with a hundred camels and a large escort
of Zouias mounted on horses, including several sheikhs, the principal of
whom was Bu Guettin. He accomplished the amazing feat of reaching
Taiserbo in four and a half days, by riding nearly twenty hours out of
the twenty-four. In his most interesting book on his North African
travels, which has unfortunately not been translated into English, he
suggests that Taiserbo may have been the site of the original Tebu
sultanate, as he saw ruins which might possibly be those of a castle or
stronghold at Diranjedi. He continued his southern course by way of
Buseima, till he reached Hawawiri, where he was persuaded by a friendly
sheikh, Korayim Abd Rabu, to camp in an outlying palm grove to avoid any
friction with the villagers, who refused to allow the Nasrani to enter
their country.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AS A BEDUIN SHEIK]
The plucky Teuton describes the gathering outside his tent and the long
discussion as to whether he and his companions should be murdered or
not. The day following, August 14, they were induced by Bu Guettin and
the treacherous Zouias, who were fanatically opposed to the presence of
strangers and greedy to share the spoils of so rich a caravan, to leave
Hawawiri and, skirting the oasis, to isolate themselves in Boema, the
loneliest and most deserted spot in the whole group. Rohlfs apparently
agreed to this plan because the neighbourhood of any of the main
villages was dangerous. He had to oppose the combined hatred of the
ekhwan and pupils of the zawias, religions fanatics, the villagers who
jealously guarded the privacy of their country and the passing caravans
of pilgrims and merchants. After being held a prisoner for nearly a
month in this lonely camp, in daily fear for his life, he was helped to
escape by his original friend, Korayim, who took him by night, with his
three companions, to his son-in-law’s camp, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Zuruk. That very night the German’s camp was attacked
and looted. Every single note-book, map, drawing and scientific
instrument was destroyed, so Rohlfs was unable to attempt much
description even of his journey up to Hawawiri.
In the book which he calls “Kufra” he devotes a chapter to his perils
and battles in that inhospitable oasis, but, after his rescue by
Korayim, whose son we met at Taj, his narrative becomes very disjointed.
He was moved to another place before being allowed to leave the oasis.
He himself thinks it was Jof, but from his description of the journey
this seems impossible. He spent another fortnight under the surveillance
of Korayim—he tells us that he was not allowed to move without a guard
of twenty rifles—during which he seems to have confronted every form of
extortion and threat with calm and intrepidity. On September 27 he left
the oasis with Korayim, who took him all the way to Benghazi, where,
unfortunately, the sheikh died. Consequently there is a legend that
Rohlfs poisoned him. With experience of the greed of our own escort, I
came to the conclusion that the grateful German probably gave him too
much of his own cherished stores and the Arab over-ate!
After this ill-fated expedition no alien presence cast a shadow on the
sanctity and isolation of Kufara till Sayed Ahmed sent his prisoner
there. Many attempts were made from Siwa to pierce the first barrier of
dunes, but in vain. The secrets which Rohlfs had so nearly solved
remained wrapped in the mirage of the great deserts and Kufara was still
a legend more than a fact.
The amicable relations at present existing between Italy and the
Senussi, and the genuine friendship of Senator de Martino and Sayed
Idris made it easy for us to reach Jedabia as the guests of the former’s
most hospitable Government, but thenceforth it was left us to fend for
ourselves. We could not take our kindly hosts of Benghazi into our
confidence, as they would have been aghast at the idea of a young woman
venturing alone into a territory as yet unexplored. The agreement that
had just been signed with Sidi Idris gave them control of the whole of
Cyrenaica, thus assuring a future of great prosperity to the colony, but
it left the great Libyan desert from Aujela to Jaghabub, with Kufara
still another six hundred kilometres to the south, in the hands of Sayed
Idris as an independent ruler under Italian protection.
A most humorous complication added immensely to our difficulties.
Hassanein Bey, having been secretary to the Italo-British Mission which
arranged the treaty of 1916 with the Senussi, was promptly suspected of
the darkest Pan-Islamic designs. For a week at Benghazi we lived in a
state of suspense. Intrigue was in the air and everyone suspected the
motives of everyone else. If a camion broke down, we decided that we
were not to be allowed to reach Jedabia. If Hassanein spoke to a Beduin,
using the Moslem salutation, the eyes of our so-called interpreter would
almost pop out of his head with interest and dismay. Relays of kindly
individuals took the utmost interest in our history, plans, ideas and
belongings. We were “pumped” until we could not think of anything more
to say; and we, in turn “pumped” every hospitable and amiable individual
who politely and indifferently asked us our destination! At times we
must have worn such strained and agonised expressions that I wonder we
were not suspected of Bolshevism at the very least. The most amusing
part of the business was afforded by the spies who constantly surrounded
us and who were so thrilled with their own importance that I used to
have daily fights with Hassanein Bey to prevent him playing delightful
little comedies to excite them still more.
However, once Jedabia was reached we felt happier. The open desert lay
before us and the lure of the great tracks south! Somewhere far beyond
the pale mauve line of the horizon lay the secret of the Sahara, the
oasis which had become the goal of every explorer, from the enthusiastic
coastguard officers who dreamed of forcing a trotting hajin through the
sands, to the governments whose camions and light-car patrols had failed
to pierce the waterless drifts. The masked Tuaregs, those lawless riders
who threaten the lumbering south-bound caravans, bring strange tales of
a white race, blue-eyed, fair-haired, whose women live unveiled with
their men. Legend has attributed its home to the mysterious oasis whose
position varies according to the whims of the map-maker. “Inshallah” I
breathed to the stars and the winds!